by Erin POPEKLA

Her room was thump­ing again, and Amy just couldn’t take it. “Will you shut the FUCK UP?!?” she said, pound­ing her fist against the thin wall.

Lance and Jessie replied with loud­er moans and heav­ier breath­ing. Amy shoved her feet in her clogs, pulled her coat on over her pa­ja­mas, and slammed the door on her way out.

Lance would on­ly last about ten min­utes. She hat­ed that she knew this fact. She wished they had a more reg­u­lar pat­tern, enough that she could be out of her room at the ap­point­ed hour. If it were al­ways an af­ter-work-to-get-up-an-ap­petite-for-din­ner-fuck, then she’d just go straight to din­ner, and not stop at home first. Or if it were a Sun­day-morn­ing-day-off-wake-up-fuck, then she’d take a Sun­day morn­ing run. But there was no de­ci­pher­able pat­tern. The on­ly con­sis­ten­cy was that her neigh­bors al­ways seemed to screw each oth­er when she was home. Tonight was the worst — a good­night-hon­ey-fuck just as she was about to fall asleep. Amy was start­ing to won­der if she was the pat­tern, an audio-voyeur.

She walked over to the deck of the Chalet. It was the on­ly taste­ful build­ing at Mc­Mur­do Sta­tion, home to the of­fices of the Sta­tion Man­ag­er and the Na­tion­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Rep­re­sen­ta­tive. The build­ing was all wood, even with love­ly wood pan­el­ing in­side, and they’d built a deck that looked out to the frozen sea of Mc­Mur­do Sound and the Trans-Antarc­tic Moun­tains. A se­mi-cir­cle of flag poles pop­u­lat­ed the deck, one flag for each na­tion that orig­i­nal­ly signed the Antarc­tic Treaty. A bust of Ad­mi­ral Byrd sat in the middle.

Tonight wasn’t bad, clear and in the 30’s with a bit of wind to keep the flags busy. Amy sat down on the cold wood­en bench and stared out at the moun­tains. She tried to do a breath­ing med­i­ta­tion like they did at the end of yo­ga class, breathe out tox­ins, breath in pure air. Breathe out frus­tra­tion, breathe in pure air. The moun­tains of­fered a back­drop for her breath­ing with their sta­ble fig­ures, their in­dif­fer­ent gaze. She could feel her­self calm­ing ever so slight­ly with each ex­ha­la­tion, her shoul­ders sink­ing a lit­tle low­er, a bit more com­fort­ably in­to her back.

She was grate­ful for the sound of the flags. Their thick fab­ric snapped with the wind, and clos­ing her eyes, the sound took her to the mid­dle of that flock of macaws from Cos­ta Ri­ca. She called to mind their vi­brant and flu­id col­ors, tried to hang on to them when she opened her eyes to the vo­ra­cious white.

She glanced at her watch. It had been fif­teen min­utes. She de­cid­ed she’d brave her room again. She had to get up in six hours.

Thank­ful­ly, they were fin­ished. Af­ter Amy slipped un­der the cov­ers, she re­al­ized she’d wait­ed too long. Her room rocked with Lance’s snores.

Filed under Fiction on February 28th, 2009

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